Chicken breasts cooked in a white mushroom sauce built on butter, flour and cold milk. The everyday Colombian version, served over white rice, half an hour from start to table.
The sauce thickens late
This is the one thing to know before making it, and it is where people lose their nerve.
Four cups of milk with two tablespoons of flour is a very loose start. Ten minutes in it still looks like milk with mushrooms in it, and the instinct is to reach for more flour.
Do not. What thickens this sauce is the twenty minutes uncovered with the chicken in it. The milk reduces, the chicken releases its juices into it, and by the end it coats the back of a spoon. Adding flour early gives you a sauce that is both pasty and floury, and there is no way back from that.
If you want it thicker from the outset, take a cup of milk out rather than putting flour in.
Cold milk, and why
The second step mixes the flour into a little cold milk to make a paste, then thins that paste with the rest of the milk before any of it meets heat.
The temperature is not a detail. Flour granules swell and stick together on contact with hot liquid, which is what a lump is: dry flour wrapped in a cooked skin that no amount of whisking penetrates. In cold milk the granules disperse first and only start swelling once the whole mixture heats up evenly.
It is the same reason a béchamel starts with a roux. This recipe takes the other route, and cold milk is what makes it work.
A Colombian everyday dish
This is not a French chicken in cream sauce and it is not a casserole made with tinned soup. It sits somewhere else.
The base is butter, onion, garlic, flour and milk, which is a white sauce built the household way, and the mushrooms and chicken cook in it together in one pot. It comes out pale, mild and generous, and it goes over white rice.
It is the kind of thing made on a weeknight when there is a packet of chicken breasts and half a punnet of mushrooms, and that is exactly what it is good at.
Five tablespoons of butter
Which is a lot, and it is doing more than one job.
It cooks the onion and garlic at the start, and what is left emulsifies into the milk as it reduces, which is a good part of why the finished sauce is rich rather than merely thick. There is no cream anywhere in this recipe.
You can cut it back to three and the dish still works. It will be lighter and a little less glossy.
More chicken
- Sudado de pollo — the stewed one.
- Arroz con champiñones — the same mushrooms, in rice.
- Colombian white rice — what it goes over.
- Grilled chicken breast — no sauce at all.
Chicken in Mushroom Sauce FAQ
Because it is meant to be. Four cups of milk against two tablespoons of flour starts thin, and what thickens it is the twenty uncovered minutes with the chicken in it, as the milk reduces and the chicken gives up its juices.
Use three cups of milk instead of four. Adding more flour instead risks a pasty sauce, because there is nowhere for the extra to go.
Because the flour is dispersed into it before anything is heated. Cold milk lets the flour paste loosen gradually; warm milk starts cooking the flour on contact and it seizes into lumps you cannot whisk out.
Optional, and the ingredient list includes a tablespoon of oil for it. Browning adds flavour; skipping it keeps the sauce pale and white, which is how it is usually served in Colombia.
Yes, and many prefer them. They need longer than the twenty minutes given for breasts, so allow thirty and check the bone.
Fresh, sliced. Tinned ones work at a push but they are already wet, so drain them well or the sauce will not reduce.
White rice, almost always, with the sauce spooned over. Steamed potatoes and a salad are the other standard pairing.
📖 Recipe
Ingredients
- 5 tablespoons butter
- ¼ onion (finely chopped)
- 1 clove garlic (finely chopped)
- 2 tablespoons flour
- 4 cups cold milk (cold matters: it is what keeps the flour from lumping)
- 1 ½ cups mushrooms (sliced)
- 4 chicken breasts
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- Chopped parsley, to finish
- 1 tablespoon oil (for browning the chicken first, if you want to)
Notas
Instructions
- Heat a large pot over medium heat. Melt the butter and cook the onion and garlic until golden.
- Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, mix the flour with a little of the cold milk until it forms a smooth paste, then add the rest of the milk gradually, stirring, so no lumps form.
- Pour the milk and flour mixture into the pot, stirring constantly.
- Add the mushrooms, then the chicken breasts seasoned with salt and pepper. Cook uncovered for about 20 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has reduced and thickened.
- Check the salt and pepper, and scatter the chopped parsley over the top.
- Serve with white rice, a salad or steamed potatoes.
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